Bank Indonesia (BI), the country’s central bank, has launched its first real-time payments infrastructure BI-FAST that is driven by ACI Worldwide, a global provider of real-time payments and digital payment solutions.
BI-FAST is an integral part of Indonesia’s ongoing digital modernisation initiative and central to its Payment System Blueprint, IPS 2025.
IPS 2025 aims to transform the country’s payment infrastructure, integrate its digital economy, and finance sector, and respond to public demands for a fast, easy, safe, affordable and reliable payment system.
Bank Indonesia and ACI were able to implement BI-FAST in less than nine months and aims to incorporate 135 banks, as well as merchants and payment service providers when complete.
Phase one of the national initiative is already live with more than twenty banks across the country, providing participating institutions a series of key services including 24/7 real-time credit transfers with real-time transaction settlement at bank and customer levels.
They will also have access to unique identifiers (proxy addresses) to simplify, secure and facilitate payments as well as integrated real-time fraud detection.
The ACI Low Value Real-Time Payments technology driving BI’s central infrastructure hub allows more than one hundred payment scheme players to connect.
ACI also provides immediate access to the core real-time infrastructure, laying the foundation for future services such as Request to Pay (R2P), eMandates, direct debit, and cross-border payments.
“Together, ACI and Bank Indonesia have created one of the most secure and future-proof real-time payment systems in the world, one that will help accelerate Indonesia’s digital economy and bring millions of unbanked citizens into the formal financial sector.
Delivering a national central infrastructure of this size and complexity from scratch, while simultaneously supporting the go live of over 20 banks in less than nine months, is no easy undertaking.”
said Leslie Choo, Managing Director – APAC, ACI Worldwide.